The Israel Lobby, C’ted

Alexander Cockburn, in the latest Nation, tells the story of the first time he wrote about Israeli violence against the Palestinians—yes, in retaliation for (lesser) Palestinian violence—and it was removed from the Village Voice, in 1973, in an “unwonted act of censorship” by the Voice’s founder and then-editor Dan Wolf. Cockburn’s moving piece underscores two points: 1, Even Jews on the left (like myself) have deep internal struggles over how much to criticize Israel. Tony Kushner explained this point to me in the Nation earlier this year, when he described the agony that he experienced over his film Munich, the feeling that he might be aiding antisemites. 2, When Mearsheimer and Walt talk about a pro-Israel lobby as a very wide and loose group of people sharing certain interests, they made the smart point of including censorship of pro-Palestinian views by influential editors. This is further data.